Snippet: Creating a Narrative ☇

Philip Elmer-DeWitt shares some thoughts on some of the stock price drops and whispers that Apple CEO Tim Cook needs to be replaced. I’ve had the feeling that there is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt and generally bogus headlines by larger publications, and that there isn’t anything really fundamentally wrong with Apple—at least right now:

Make no mistake, the people who want Tim Cook’s head on a spike are not friends of Apple. As far as I know, he still has the deep respect of the analysts who know the company best and — most important — the confidence of the board of directors who granted a million restricted shares of Apple as an incentive for him to stick around for at least a decade.

For the record, Apple is still trading higher today that it was when Cook replaced Steve Jobs. The forces that drove the stock up to over $700 and then down to below $390 seem to me to have more to do with a dysfunctional securities market than anything Cook has done as CEO.

Anyone who has an opinion or agenda can tweet a rumor (or create contradicting headlines) that indirectly affects Apple. Depending on the specifics, it mostly likely will translate into Apple’s stock price. If there’s anything I’m concerned about, it’s that Apple has not had any sort of product launch/update yet this year. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—they have a good mix of products that aren’t stale. As for the stock itself, we’ll have to see how the market responds to tomorrow’s earnings call.